


Not even the Stars

by regsregis



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Damnation Arc, Dark Rhys, Eye Trauma, M/M, Soul Mates AU, bitter sweet, bl3 spoiler free, but includes scraps of new lore, but with a twist, canon compliant up to ep 5, tags to be updated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 08:04:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regsregis/pseuds/regsregis
Summary: Rhys always had his suspicions, fear freezing the blood in his veins solid. Ever since a tear in his very soul oh so conveniently aligned with the death of Hyperion's CEO.But he wasn't the only one, that much scrolling though the Handsome Jack's fan forums told him the next day. So he chalked it up to just bad timing on his unknown's soulmate's part.With this inconvenience out of the way, he was ready to spread the wings of his newfound freedom.Until his past catches up to him again and Rhys doesn't know anymore if he should fear it or hope for new beginnings.





	Not even the Stars

**Prologue**

His hand shakes, fingers wrapped too tightly around a shard of glass, thin rivulets of blood running down his wrist and soaking into the dirty cuff of his once pristinely pressed shirt.  
Every nerve aflame, sparking to the same pulse the open wires dangling from the ripped open socket of his arms light up.   
  
Rhys draws another trembling breath, lungs filling with smoke, burnt plastic and scorched metal - a familiar taste of defeat and disappointment heavy on the back of his throat. 

“You wouldn’t dare, coward!” Jack seethes, the hologram looking almost surprised now that he has lost control over the dismantled arm, still fizzling with murder and vile intentions.

He’s a coward, of course he is, Rhys doesn’t question the sentiment, sweat making the blunt edge of the shard glide across his skin. Two more tries and he finally wedges it under the rim of the echo port. It shifts and something in his brain collapses in on itself, a physical sensation but once it slips free with a wet squelch, the void roars.

The frantic screams grow quiet, blissful silence and a soft crackle of a nearby fire even though Jack’s mouth hasn’t stopped moving.

Rhys laughs, high pitched and hysterical, his echo eye whirling to life and translating the movement of Jack’s cruel lips into something he can understand. He doesn’t want to hear - _ see _, what lies he will be fed this time. 

His head swims, due to the exhaustion, emotional and physical, pain, fear and the soaring promise of victory. Just a little bit more, freedom grazing his fingers.

Glass hot in his palms, he watches the hologram, now on his knees. 

_ Defeat suits you _ \- Rhys thinks viciously, the view skewed and he doesn’t know if it’s thanks to the shard or the glitching echo. Both most likely.   
  
Jack’s mouth forms prettily around pleads and his name. It spurs him on, despite fear and phobia so deep ingrained into his human core. There is a reason eye injuries rank the highest on the terror scale.

The shard touches his eye and Rhys recoils, screwing both of them shut. Just like that, Jack is momentarily gone. All it takes to defeat him is this one last step, just enough to render the eye unusable, get rid of it. Pluck it free from his skull so he can crush it in his grip and the curse that has followed him through his whole life, the curse bearing the name of Handsome Jack will be dispersed.

He brings his hand up again, freezing when the glass skews the view again and he can’t. Can’t.

Not again. The voice that thankfully doesn’t sound like Jack’s panics in his head, something clenching in his chest and punching the air and will to fight out of him.

His memories flit, consciousness feeble at best,_ an echo of sharp pain as his own fingers raked across his left eye, trying to dig deep enough to reach the searing in his brain. It has left him blinded, with scraps of skin and blood under his fingernails. _

_A bad dream - that’s what the shrinks said later, _ but Rhys knows better _ . He remembers that something chased him that night, body safely tucked into his Hyperion branded sheets, a bright eyed and bushy tailed intern with a head full of borrowed hatred and purple flames that left the world scorched to the ground. The star that rose from the ashes the next morning opened Hyperion’s tightly locked doors to experimental cybernetics development and that was how Rhys’ world turned a multifaceted kaleidoscope of blue and streaming data. _

Just like he knows right now, Jack’s not just a bad dream, the threat very real, more than a voice in his head, a blue, shattered nightmare that has clawed its way into the reality.

Rhys sobs, chokes on his breath, heart so loud in his ears it feels like a thunder. Jack scents the air - in a metaphorical sense, picks up on the stench of Rhys’ hesitation and starts closing in again. The man is relentless, bending in the face of defeat and picking himself up over and over again the second he sees an opening.

One step back is all it takes, Rhys jerking back and his head collides with the side of a toppled over Handsome Jack bust.

_ How fitting _ \- he thinks, bitter and losing grip on time and space, a deep cut across his eyebrow where the shard narrowly missed his eye gushing blood down his face.Through it, he catches a glimpse of Jack’s face, too close to his, glitching out and grinning victoriously as he mouths ‘weak’ at him. 

Then, there is no more Jack, nothing left, blissful emptiness as his body lays crumpled amidst the burning wreckage.

-

_Rhys never really believed in the concept of having someone out there, destined to be his and for Rhys to be theirs. Commitment was never on his agenda, not when he carefully laid out his plans for the future as an over ambitious eleven years old. Not ten years later when he was thumbing through the pages of Kosmo detailing ten ways to make your soul mate happy, waiting for his appointment with the Hyperion shrinks. He never wanted to. _

_Because Rhys had plans and, since the eye accident, deeply rooted hatred for attachment. He had his career and the lovingly hidden away posters of Handsome Jack, larger than life and with the man’s masked face hidden under a clumsily snipped out photo of Rhys’ own face. _

_The posters quickly became his comfort fantasy, taken out of a drawer after one or another particular bad night, echoes of the flashing images and pouring lava reverberating in his tired mind. During those nights he stared back at his own face, pasted over the original picture, and then would drift off to sleep to unpleasant thoughts of silky sheets and an empty bed five times bigger than his. _

_Rhys decided to fix the problem of something unwanted in his head by signing up for the neural port program once he was done paying off the eye. After the port came an upgrade to the eye, not in the least helping with the unwarranted paranoia he had started developing but it made it easier to dig out dirt on his enemies. And keep a closer eye on his friends. For fun, he often hacked into the surveillance cameras on Helios, quietly wishing he could have a non stop access to all of them. _

H_is refusal to believe began to waver on his fifth anniversary with the company, when he broke down, with his heart a gaping wound that seeped tar-like pain into his bones. _

_No one paid too much attention to him that day, the whole station shaken to the core by the quickly spreading news of Handsome Jack’s demise. At least a third of the Helios population mourned their lost soulmate now that said soulmate couldn’t deny or back their claims. The rest...rejoiced._

_Once the hurt subsided, leaving cold hard emptiness in him, Rhys did too. He felt like a cancerous growth in him, one he wasn’t even fully aware of, had been removed. The dog eared posters finally were taken out of the depths of the bottom drawer and tacked to the cork-board in his cubicle._

_While he couldn’t exactly patch up this particular hole with cybernetics, Rhys indulged himself in yet another surgery, saying goodbye to his right arm. It felt good to lop off something physical, the absence of which could be measured and accounted for._

_Things finally started looking good, with a literal weight off of his shoulders and an empty spot at the top of Hyperion food chain beckoning him closer._

-

It’s too hot, too stuffy, and his left eye keeps twitching, rotating painfully like it has a mind of it’s own. It does, he recalls a moment later, blinking his eyes open again. There’s iron at the back of his tongue and weariness that saps nim dry.

Jack’s face swims into his view.

‘Wake up idiot!’ The enraged expression on his face is translated into a scream and while Rhys can’t really hear it, it still makes the migraine a hundred times worse.

He shifts, groans, tries to level himself up and through the hologram, Rhys can see a couple of psychos rummaging through the rubble. The stun baton isn’t at his side and it takes him a moment to remember that he had lost it in the Helios’ core.

The structure is unstable at best, borderline seconds away from collapsing at worst as Rhys tries to pull his unresponsive body. He makes it through a narrow opening when something behind him slips, metal groaning, a large sheet sliding down and nearly splitting him in half when he rolls out of it’s way. 

Jack laughs, gives him an excruciatingly detailed description of how_ funny _he’d look with his insides becoming outsides. He tries to tune it out but closing the echo eye throws the world off balance, the organic one tearing up and prickling from the smoke.

The two psychos notice his disappearance, that is, if Rhys is feeling generous enough to assume the ‘meatstick and its tasty leggies’ was in regards to his persona. If they catch him, they’ll kill him. Or not. Take him apart piece by piece and make him watch as they eat his ‘tasty leggies’. It takes him a moment to realize that the gruesome description isn’t his overly vivid imagination but Jack’s words the echo eye feeds to his brain.

“Shut up! Shut up…” it’s not even anywhere close to a commanding scream he wants to make it but still draws even more attention to him, much to Jack’s delight.  
  
He scrambles to his feet, stumbling and launching himself forward when there are scratches and muttering on the other side of the collapse panel. Jack’s right there, in his peripheral vision, clipping through the wreckage and lazily lounging in the air upside down, watching him limp and providing live commentary - something Rhys doesn’t appreciate.

The hologram disappears for a second and moments later, Jack’s across the vast space that used to be the atrium leading to his office, pointing at something. Shattered diamonds crunch under the heels of his only boot and Rhys follows, against his better judgement, like a moth drawn to the flame. If Jack wants to show him a holovid of himself defeating Pandoran bandits to gloat, Rhys might just dab some seasoning onto himself and surrender to the duo at his heels.

That doesn’t seem to be the case, not this time, Jack pointing at a half opened entrance behind the security gate with a wide grin and cold malice in his eyes. It looks like as good of a hiding spot as any and Rhys sucks his breath in to squirm through the small space. There is a console behind the door cracked open, Rhys’ dirty, bloodied hand skimming over it as he tries to piece together why would Jack bring him here. 

His eyes grow wider when the flickering lights come alive and illuminate a sizable hangar. Jack’s right beside what Rhys can only assume is a vehicle, a gigantic tire with mounted turrets and a single seat inside.

‘_Brand new. A prototype babe, nothing can scale Pandora faster,_’ Jack explains, exact specs popping up in Rhys’ field of view as the hologram tries to enthusiastically slap the vehicle and then stares accusingly at his own hand as it passes through.

Rhys doesn’t question this sudden gift, wedges himself into the driver’s seat and discovers that steering with just one hand is going to be...a challenge.

_‘Let me in cupcake, I know exactly how to treat this sweet ride well_,’ the mouthed words are met with an unimpressed stare from him. Without the port Jack’s not going anywhere and especially not into something that has turrets attached to it so Rhys only shrugs. ‘_Better hurry up, Bonnie and Clyde are right behind ya._’ Jack can mock as much as he wants but what counts is that Rhys now has a way out.

The hangar’s folded door responds to the safety release as he wheels the rig to the center. It doesn’t open all the way, stuck halfway through but Rhys doesn’t have the time to try and solve it, the psychos dashing into the hangar buzzaxes first. He kick-starts the engine, grabs onto the steering stick and sends the machine busting roaring through the hangar door.

It’s night on Pandora, bone chilling wind whipping around him as he narrowly misses bits and pieces of the wreckage, the twin spires of what isn’t lodged into the planet’s surface left behind him. Rhys drives fast, trying to outrun the blue shimmer at his side and outrun the repercussions of his choices.

There are deep cracks spreading from where the station impacted with Pandora but the vehicle has a good traction and sticks to the ground safely. He doesn’t turn the lights on, relying on his echo reading the terrain in front of him and needs to hide behind a crumbling rock formation when a group of bandits whizzes past him, loud, screaming bloody murder and blasting music from their own vehicles. He doesn’t feel sorry for the survivors still stuck in the wreckage.

About an hour of aimlessly driving later, the rig’s navigation finally connects with one of the still working satellites orbiting the planet and he can finally figure out where he is and where to go.

Old Haven doesn’t seem like such a bad option, whatever bandits still might have lingered after the last explosion surely must have been lured out by the spiteful H falling from the sky. The radar tells him he’s about two hours away from it. 

He ignores Jack asking where he’s going, squeezes his eyes shut and tries to pay no mind to the AI jerking at his echo eye frantically. Rhys can’t do it right now, he feels like a scared, wounded animal, last shreds of survival instinct keeping him going. It’s easier to ignore Jack when he can’t hear him even though his brain helpfully supplies the familiar lilt to the words the echo eyes feeds to his brain.

By the time he reaches the abandoned town, he’s shaking, face damp from sweat and tears the wind forced out of his eyes. He might have been also crying for real but chooses to blame it on the weather. 

Rhys can hardly remember where the right switches are located and the hologram isn’t much help, all too pleased with himself as he investigates the bleached bones he claims to be Wallethead, picked clean by the local fauna or psychos.

When the facility once again raises from the trembling ground, quiet and dormant Rhys stumbles past the corpses inside without hesitation, nose wrinkling at the stench.

‘_You did it kiddo, ha! Who would have thought, guess all maggots are driven by this singular instinct to preserve their pathetic lives,_’ Jack laughs, walking effortlessly next to him as Rhys types in the commands for the base to descent again and sets out to find a corpse free room.

“You helped me,” Rhys finally comments, voice dry and barren of any emotions because he just can’t work himself up anymore.

'_Bravo genius,'_ the hologram taps his foot, bouncing in one spot and in this moment Rhys realizes how much it reminds him of idle animation in games. He can’t help but laugh at this because there is nothing left in him, not even enough to flinch when Jack leans closer, teeth bared in a mean grin, '_you got to live another day kiddo so I can kill you myself._'

**Author's Note:**

> I have been toying with the idea of this au for a long time and really it's just an old tale retold because I cannot resist the siren's song of AI Jack C:  
Leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed this prologue!


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